Chapter Six: Reunion
Pairing: Friendship!Havoc&Hawkeye
Characters: Jean Havoc, Riza Hawkeye, Rebecca Catalina, Heymans Breda, Roy Mustang
Rating: T
Summary: A stuck elevator allows Riza and a newly re-enlisted Jean to catch up.
Jean Timothy Havoc was not even going to pretend not to be happy about being back in his military uniform and under Roy Mustang's Command once again.
After being a civilian for over a year, with nearly half of that time being confined to a wheel chair, he had found himself feeling depressed and worthless.
It wasn't that he didn't like working at his family's General Store, he just didn't want to do it forever.
So when Rebecca noticed her husband moping around the house on his days off, she decided to give him the suggestion to ask Mustang if he could be a solider again.
After, of course, she confirmed it wasn't being married to her that was making him sulk about the couch.
"I don't know even know if I'll be able to re-enlist." Jean sighed, pulling her into his lap, resting his forehead against her shoulder blade.
"Jean, you're back has been healed for months, and you haven't had any type of physical therapy in weeks. So go ask Mustang if you can have your job back. It isn't gonna kill you to ask him." Becca cooed, kissing his forehead.
"Alright. Alright. I'll ask him tomorrow. Man I hope he says yes. I'll even take a lower rank if it means I can wear my uniform again." Jean sighed.
Jean came back home to their apartment the next day, beaming happily.
"Guess who goes to work as a Second Lieutenant on Monday?" He whooped, throwing his arms around Rebecca's waist happily.
"You guys miss me?" Jean grinned, walking into the office, a toothpick hanging out his mouth.
His decision to quit smoking was his own to make. He and Rebecca wanted kids in the future, and he would rather quit smoking before she got pregnant then to struggle to quit while she was pregnant.
"Depends? Do you still smoke when Becca isn't around?" Riza asked, not looking up from her paperwork.
Jean's face fell, and he rolled his eyes.
"No. I legitimately quit smoking months ago, thank you very much." Jean stated.
"1000 cenz says if he and Rebecca ever break up, he'll be smoking again within a week." Breda said to Riza, smirking at the frown his best friend gave him.
"2000 cenz says a day." Riza responded smugly.
"Hey!" Jean cried.
"If you two boys will excuse me, I need to deliver these files to the archives room." Riza sighed, standing up as she grabbed the nearly two foot tall stack of files off her desk.
"Lemme help. I'd rather spend my first day back at work doing something other then sitting on my ass." Jean volunteered, taking half of the files from her.
"Very well." Riza said, as they walked out of the room and towards the elevators at the end of the hall.
Going to the archives room was a simple task that Riza completed daily. Just a simple elevator ride from the office she and the Team shared on the fourth floor to the basement, a few forms to fill out with the archives secretary, and a second elevator ride back up.
All in all, depending on whether she needed to drop off files and or pick them up, the task never took Riza more then ten minutes to complete in the past.
However, the elevator never stopped abruptly between floors before.
"Son of a bitch." Jean hissed, the sudden jolt of the lift causing him and Riza to both lose their grips on some of their files.
Both of them groaning, they sunk to the floor to resort the files.
"How long do you think until we're up and moving again?" Jean sighed, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, his stack of files in the corner next to him.
"Dunno." Riza shrugged. "Could be five minutes, could be six hours."
"Great." Jean huffed.
The two snipers sat in silence for a few minutes, growing both irritated and bored with the situation.
"Wanna know what I still can't believe?" Jean asked, breaking the silence.
"What?"
"The fact that you're a mom now." He smirked.
"Tell me about it. I still can't believe you and Rebecca got married." Riza snorted.
"Honestly Riza, I've never been this happy before. And if someone had told me five years ago- hell six months ago- that I would end up happily married to Rebecca Catalina, I would've died laughing." Jean said honestly.
"I never imagined me being a mom." Riza replied.
"The rest of us did. We've always thought you'd be a great mom, especially with how you treated the Elric brothers when they were younger."
"And we always knew you'd eventually have them with Mustang. Because the two of you can pretend all you want, but it's been obvious for years that you guys love each other. Only thing stopping you guys were the frat laws." Jean added with a chuckle.
"It really was that obvious?"
"About as obvious as Major Armstrong's personality."
Riza let out a sigh, looking down at her feet. "Kids were something that we excepted probably wasn't going to happen for us." She said softly.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it was a silent agreement that I wouldn't retire until he reached his goal of becoming Führer. And after that he wants to put those who fought in Ishval on trial for War Crimes. Assuming that we both survived the trials and weren't put to death, and adding to the fact that no doctor here in Amestris recommends a woman to have a baby after thirty five..."
"You guys thought you'd be too old to start a family by the time it was able to happen." Jean finished for her.
"Exactly. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Sophia. We both do. If we didn't, we could've easily found a new family for her. I just didn't picture myself becoming a mom- much less a mom before thirty." Riza said.
"Any plans to have anymore?" Jean asked.
He didn't know much about her and Roy's childhoods, only that neither had any biologically siblings. He was curious if they had any plans to give Sophia any little brothers or sisters of her own.
"I don't know. Maybe? We haven't really discussed it. I figured our plans were still the same, just with a child of our own to come home to now." Riza replied.
"You know, Rebecca says the whole don't have kids after thirty five thing is bullshit. Woman in Aeurugo have kids in their forties. Hell, according to her, her Grandma had her Mom at forty three- and the medical abilities down there are way worst then here in Amestris. She says it's a sexist scare tactic used to get women to be married and pop out babies before they can legally drink." Jean informed her.
"Lieutenant General Armstrong said the same thing once. Called it misogynistic bullshit. Sounds like something Major General Maverick would come up with." Riza scoffed.
"I heard he came to visit like a month ago. What'd he say while he was here?" Jean asked.
"He said to me, and I quote: A woman has absolutely no place in our great country's military. A woman's place is at home, bearing sons for her Husband, chosen for her by her Father." Riza scoffed, rolling her eyes.
"Jesus. What the hell? Heymans told me a story while he was stationed back West that can top that though."
"Oh please tell me what it was."
"Okay, I don't know the full story, but the footnotes version? He basically told a female warrant officer that she wouldn't have had her miscarriage if she was at home where she belonged."
"What the actual fuck?" Riza snarled.
"You don't- you're not supposed to say something like that to a woman." She hissed angrily.
Jean decided it was best to attempt to change the subject off of Maverick.
"Hey Reez? Can I ask you something I've been curious about for years?" He asked.
Riza raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"How come you always dress so... covered up? Even when it's over a hundred degrees outside, you'll still be in a turtle neck instead of a T-shirt or a tank top. Why?"
Riza let out a shaky breath. She couldn't tell him the entire truth, but she couldn't brush his question off either. Jean was like a brother to her- more so now that he was married to Rebecca, the closest thing she had to an older sister.
He deserved some form of an answer.
"My... childhood wasn't a happy one. Not like your's or Becca's. Since my mom died when I was five, it was just me and my Dad while I was growing up. If he hadn't died when I was sixteen, he probably would've done what Maverick said and chosen my husband for me. Over ten years after he died, I'm still recovering from the scars of my childhood. Most are mental and emotional scars... but the worst ones are physically on my back." Riza said, looking down at her lap.
She didn't care what he thought her back looked like, he would never guess it was a full back tattoo.
"Jeez Riza. I'm so sorry for asking." Jean mumbled.
"Don't be. It's something I eventually need to talk to someone other then Roy about." She replied.
"So he's seen them?"
"Yep. That man has seen every inch of me, and I've seen every inch of him." Riza smirked, fighting off a blush.
"You should ask Doctor Marcoh to see if a philosopher stone will remove the scars." Jean informed her.
"What?"
"Seriously. He used the stone to give me back my ability to walk and the Chief's ability to see. We all go back to Ishval in a few months, you should at least ask him to try." Jean said, optimistically.
"Besides, he said the more it's used the quicker it'll deplete, and the Ishvallans don't except medicine like that. Not that anyone can blame them."
"I'll... think about it." Riza said softly, as the elevator began to move again.
"About damn time." Jean groaned, standing up.
Twenty minutes later, Riza and Jean re-entered the office.
Silently, Riza marched over to Roy's desk, and slammed her hands down against the wood, a glare on her face.
"What did I do this time?" Roy gulped.
"Have maintenance fix the elevators. Because I don't want to spend half an hour trapped between floors. Again!" Riza snapped.
"So that's what took you guys so long." Roy said.
"Where the hell do you think we were for almost an hour?" Jean yelped.
"We figured you got lost and Hawkeye went to go find you." Breda shrugged.
Jeans response was to flip Breda off.